SATURDAY, OCTOBER 28, 1848.

New Zealander, Volume 4, Issue 252, 28 October 1848, Page 2

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 28, 1848.

The injury to an infant settlement, and the injustice to its inhabitants, arising from an ex • orbitant price exacted for building allotments, in its towns and villages, we attempted to demonstrate in our last. The evils of a system so oppressive are not only mediate but immediate. Their mischievous effects are not those of the moment alone. They aie prospective as well as present — and are calculated to engender a desire for mere make shift expedients, and to discourage every eifort at emulation in the construction of edifices of stability and good taste. They tend to the creation of towns of the most flimsy and perishable materials — of paltry and o( passing value — the dwellings being perilous to the lives of the inmates — the warehouses unworthy of the merchandise committed to their doubtful trust. They compel the semblance rather than the substance of a town ; and even that, at a very serious out- , lay ; the money expended on the workmanship of the comparatively wotthless fabrics, be- j ing, in a few years, lost to the builders by decay of the buildings, which achieve no permanent benefit to the Colonist or the Colony. | Insecure and insignificant as wooden cities I have ever been held to be, they have, also, been distinguished as peculiarly unwholesome and destructive to health. In illustration of the fact we might instance London, so fearfully and frequently devastated by plague, previous to J the gioat (ire of ifiu'C. To New Orleans, the j natural unhealtliincss of whose climate has, of j late years, been gieatly ameliorated by the di scat ding of wood in building "by supplying the city abundantly with water, paving lite strcrta, removing wooden &ewers, and teplai'insr them with others of stone." And to the magnificent city of New York, where, " originally the houses weie mostly of wood, and the streets narrow and confined," where, " theie is ha,idly such a thing as a sink or common sewer in the whole city : the night soil and filth are collected in pits, of which there is one in every house, and, being conveyed to the nearest quay, are thrown into the water j but as these quays are made of timber, with many projections, a great deal of filth is retained about them, producing, ' in hot weather, an abominable stench. The i yellow fever, by which New York is sometimes visited, uniformly breaks out in the lower and dirtiest part of the town ; and seldom, indeed, extends to the new and more elevated streets. It is now much less prevalent than formerly ; j and the general opinion seems to be, that if stones were substituted for timber in the quays, sewers constructed, and proper regulations enforced as to cleanliness, the scourge would entirely disappear." j Scarlet fever, recently so fatal in Sydney, and in Auckland, rioted most in the back lanes and alleys of the former, where wooden tenements, (doomed by municipal law never more to be erected) continue to linger in rotten and \ pestilential existence. When we behold such | structures prohibited by the local enactments j of youthful cities ; when we look at the safe, the salutary, and the substantial buildings of brick and stone, erected, and erecting, at Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, HobartTown, Launceston, Wellington, and all the other towns and villages of the neighbouring Provinces. When we look at these and turn to contemplate the everlasting superstructure of wood, still springing into mushroom existence, and which impart to the capital of New Zealand neither character nor credit — neither substance nor value— we cannot but deplore the injustice to which Auckland is subjected, and bitterly denounce the grinding impolicy of a grasping Colonial Office, which seeks to sack the citizens rather than to sustain the city ! The Surveyors, with their chains and pegs, have, for some time past, been busily engaged in laying off the ground in the vicinity of the roads, or streets, now in process of construction by Captain Cockraft's party of the 58th Regiment. This activity is, we presume, the precursor of an attempted sale of allotments upon a grand scale. If so, we entreat his Excellency the Governor-in-Chief to call to mind the capital city of his former rule, and to contrast the goodly dwellings of Adelaide, with the dingy pens of Auckland ; and having done so, to afford, if possible, the denizens of the latter some little chance to elevate the character of their metropolis to something deserving the name of a city. This may very easily be done, by a sweeping reduction in the price charged for the requisite allotments ; but it can never ' be achieved by a population of limited capital, w long At, the funds — which a parental govern-

jnent should delight to see invested in the forr tnation of a city — are wrested by a griping r hand, from their legitimate purpose, to be sunk ' in the soil cm which that city might be made to flourish. \ If the Colonial Office authorities be the Trustees of the Colonies, and not mere tiuclc- • sters oi tricksters of the empiie, the good of the 1 colonies, not the amount of which they may be able to despoil them, must be their aim ; and, if so, that aim must naturally induce them to afford every assistance to the leal and permanent improvement of every city and town of Her Majesty's colonial possessions. Assuming these premises to be correctly staled, we shall proceed to show how Auckland might hope to compete with other colonial rivals, and acquire, like New York, " new and more elevated streets," into which dirt and disease would find a less easy access, At the next town land sale, then, we would reduce the purchase money to a comparatively nominal price; .say, from fifty or a hundred poundsthe quarter of an acre lot, to fifty shillings, 1 or five pounds,at the utmost; and, as an equivalent for that reduction, we would bind each purchaser to fence in and cultivate his allotment within the next twelve months ; and, in a year thereafter, to erect a dwelling house of sub- ; stantial materials, stone or briek — pei mission being accorded, meanwhile, to the original purchaser to make, should lie see (it, a lesale of his interest in the land, subject to all its primary conditions. If no house should be completed within two years of the date of sale, tl>e Government to be empowered to levy an adequate fine for non fulfilment of the contract - y and, ac the expiration of an additional six months, if still unfulfilled, to resume occupation of the forfeited land. A location order lobe given to the purchaser of the land at the date of sale, with a guarantee of the issue of a Crown grant to the freehold, upon demand made, after the terms of the sale shall have been complied with. Some such arrangement, and away would go the wooden abominations which disfigure and endanger the town. BHcktnakers would become more numerous, and bricks more plentiful and more cheap. Nor would the Commis* sariat, Ordnance Stores, and a few other buildings, be the only scoiia edifices. Our architecture would improve in security a3 much as in ornamental design, and Auckland would be placed beyond the dread of being reduced to a heap of ashes by the outburst of a single, if central, fire. Wo propound no Utopian doctrine. Wo suggest hut the fair and honest concession of a privilege accorded to all the neighbouiing Colonies. We have seen tow us of commercial value and architectural woith cieated by the libeiahty in land vouchsafed to their colonists. We behold a depot, similat to those thrown together in England for prisoueis of war, elected here, by those unjust exactions for a plot which have crushed and quelled the advancement of Auckland. May belter times be at hand !

Wanganui. — By the " Sarah Berry," we have intelligence of the opening, on the Ist instant, of a new Wesleyan Chapel, at Wanganui. Three sermons were preached upon the occasion. Two to the European, and one to the Native population, by the Itev. W. Woon, of Waimate, Taranaki South. This Chapel, we believe, will, ere this, have been occupied by the Rev. W. Kirk,, who has been, lately appointed to that station. By the way, with respect to the new Chapel in this city, we regret to be told that our notice of that noble building was not fully satisfactory. We thought we had done every justice in description of an edifice at once spacious, strong, and suitable to the present wants of the society. A structure, one of the most prominent features of our town — one raised, with e<iual liberality on the part of the subscribers, and with as much judgment and good, faith upon that of the Building Committee. If we have done any 01 either of them injustice, the fault is one more of ignorance than of design — for we were really most anxiousto congratulate our Wesleyan friends upon their praiseworthy endeavours, both among the colonists and thenatives of New Zealand. Their prospects are now shining brighter and brighter, and it will gratify us to see them enjoying the distinction, which they earn by purely Christian means. We forgot to state that the old Chapel has been converted to a School House, conducted by a lady and gentleman familiar with Bell's system of education. Upon Colonial Educa-^ tion more hereafter.

Sudden Death. — A melancholy case of sudden death occurred in our neighbourhood on Thursday morning. The victim was a Mrs. Agnes Dunn, a fine young woman, of about thirty years of age, who retired to rest, the previous evening, in perfect health ; but, upon entering her room early the following morning, the vital spark was discovered to be extinct. About three months since, the deceased had experienced an attack of apoplexy, at which time she declined subjecting herself to medical treatment. »She was a widow, and has left a young orphan child and an aged mother to deplore their loss. An inquest was held on th» body, the same day, at Wood's Masonic Hotel ; and, from the evidence adduced, the Jury had no difficulty in arriving at their verdict — - " Died of Apoplexy v M